Funny News

Sunday

May 29, 2011 at 6:55 PM

COLORADO STATE PATROL FREES THE BIRD. SKYNYRD APPROVES.

DENVER — A harassment charge has been dropped in the case of a Colorado man who gave a state trooper the finger in April.

Saying it’s free speech to give officers the finger, the Colorado State Patrol said in a statement late Friday that it asked the case to be dropped. The State Patrol described the incident as “protected free speech.”

Thirty-five-year-old Shane Boor was charged with misdemeanor harassment after acknowledging “flipping the bird” to an officer making a traffic stop near Denver April 19. The American Civil Liberties Union offered Boor free legal defense in the case that made headlines.

Boor said he told the officer he gave him the finger “because you’re thieves and you harass people.”

ANTIFREEZE LEAK IN MICHIGAN. NOT COOL.

KALAMZOO, Mich. — Green antifreeze bubbling up from the ground in downtown Kalamazoo turned a few heads this week.

The Kalamazoo Gazette reports that a landscaping crew digging up shrubs and roots Thursday apparently ruptured a pipe from an underground snow-melt system.

The green liquid pooled near the street in the southwestern Michigan community. It was cleaned up by Friday.

SHOULD’VE USED FEDEX

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — The shipping label said the mailed package contained replicas of Peruvian ceramics. An X-ray machine used by customs agents discovered it really held three skulls and a mummy more than 2,000 years old.

Authorities said Friday that the package was intercepted at Argentina’s central post office, and an Argentine citizen who was waiting for the shipment has been detained as part of an investigation into illegal trading in ancient cultural artifacts.

Officials speculated the package would have been relayed to a museum or a private collector in Europe, where such old bones are in demand because of the blankets and other woven material that surround ancient South American mummies.

A preliminary evaluation by Argentina’s national archaeology institute determined that the bones are from the pre-Inca Paracas culture on Peru’s coast, and date from between the 7th and 3rd centuries B.C., officials said.

Authorities said the artifacts were mailed from La Paz, Bolivia, with the false contents declaration.

Last year, Bolivian police foiled a similar mummy mailing enterprise and detained a woman who tried to send a Peruvian mummy to France.

WHAT A COUPLE OF SCREWBALLS

UNIONTOWN, Pa. — Police are hoping the threat of losing their permits will be enough to thaw the frosty relationship of two Pennsylvania ice cream truck drivers accused of trying to run each other off the road.

The Herald-Standard of Uniontown reports police told the rival vendors to chill out after a dispute Wednesday night.

Authorities say the wife of one vendor told police the other man tried to run her husband off the road.

The implicated ice cream driver disputes the woman’s account, saying it was her husband who tried to force him off the road. He also claimed the man had returned his good-humored hello by shouting an expletive.

Patrolman Thomas Kolencik says he warned both drivers the city could explore revoking their permits if they can’t get along.

Until, that is, the central Pennsylvania man knocked out a wall to get it out.

Reeves spent the past nine years building a two-seat airplane in the basement of his Cumberland County home. The plane arrived in pieces via mail but eventually it became way too big to get up the steps.

So Reeves dug a trench down to the foundation and took out a wall. Reeves pulled the plane out Wednesday using a truck, a chain and some neighbors.

Onlookers were drawn to the spectacle by the “Airplane Removal Wednesday” put up on Reeves’ porch.

Reeves tells The Patriot-News of Harrisburg he spent $40,000 on the plane and about $5,000 on the excavation.

IN A RELATED STORY, WE NOW DECLARE OURSELVES EMPEROR OF BLUFFTON

SEATTLE — More than a dozen people are running for positions in Seattle, including one man who’s seeking an office that doesn’t exist.

KIRO-FM reports Paul Leonardo has launched his campaign on Facebook for West Seattle mayor.

Leonard promises he won’t be a typical Seattle politician.

He admits his campaign is a joke but hopes it draws more attention to the neighborhood some residents call “the peninsula.”

Jeez, even the houses in New York make us feel fat

NEW YORK — A house dubbed New York City’s “skinniest” is on the market with a hefty price tag: $4.3 million.

The town house at 75½ Bedford Street in the West Village has been home to the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, the anthropologist Margaret Mead and the actor Cary Grant.

It measures just 9½ feet wide, has three-bedrooms, four fireplaces and a lush backyard. It was built in 1873.

Broker Bo Poulsen at Town Residential says the last buyer paid $2.1 million for the building in 2009 and put in a million-dollar renovation.

The kitchen has Italian marble counters and the master bath opens to a balcony overlooking the garden.

Prospective buyers can see the space at a “private preview party” scheduled for Wednesday.

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